I love the mix of natural and urban sounds in our garden; the street car in the distance, neighbours clinking glasses, dogs barking, birds chirping. August is quiet on our street, and sounds emanate. If we’re lucky, the tree crickets put on an evening concert for us. They’ve been more vocal of late, or maybe we’re just listening better.
A Horiatiki without tomatoes is like aCaldo Verdewithout potatoes. Tomato, tomato, potato, potato –– you may as well call the whole thing off. Tomatoes are the star ingredient in this classic Greek Salad. And with ones as juicy and sweet as those that grow all over Greece, why would anyone substitute them for a lowly pepper? Unless you’re me. I’ve hated tomatoes for as long as I can remember. As a child, I ate my own version of the salad –– peeled cucumbers, Kalamata olives, red onion, oregano, salt, pepper and olive olive oil –– while everyone else’s plates overflowed with plump tomatoes. On days when we’d eatGemista, there was always a single green pepper stuffed with rice for me, and a platter of stuffed tomatoes for everyone else at the table. To this day, I won’t go near a raw tomato for love or money. I picture summer dinners of beautiful, glossy tomatoes from the garden bathed in olive oil and basil I want to be sick. It’s such a bore, my scorn for tomatoes. All you tomato lovers will salivate over this exquisite ode to the noble fruit. It’s not for me, but it’s just too beautiful not to share.
In celebration of our Luma’s seventh spin around the sun, I bring you the exuberantly colourful work of abstract expressionist painter, Jules Olitski. Olitski painted with an industrial spray gun, and created canvases that are a wash of joyous colour and light. On his creative process Olitski said, “expect nothing, do your work, celebrate.”